Nukes useless?

[ambien]

I'm playing as the USA and have taken Okinawa and Iwo Jima. I've dropped 6 nuclear bombs on Japan (including Tokyo, twice), and still Japan has not surrendered. In fact, the nukes don't seem to do anything. Tokyo's population remains at 15.2 million. How is it possible that my nukes haven't killed a single person? What is the point of nukes in HoI4? Do I have to invade the Japanese home islands to force capitulation?

 

[Shaka of Carthage]

From what I understand, nukes don't kill people. Just destroys equipment. Never used them myself.

Do agree that dropping nukes should either force a surrender or significantly increase the possibility of a surrender.

 

[BeauNiddle]

If Japan has lost the mainland (korea & china) & some cores (Iwo Jima & other islands) then dropping 2 nukes within a year will make Japan surrender.

If you drop the nukes whilst they still have 100% of their cores then they wont care and will decide to fight on.


Nukes are very small in the 40's - it was Hydrogen bombs that really boosted the yields from nukes. Nukes will kill military units they are dropped on & do infrastructure damage. I don't think anything in the game kills actual population due to Paradox's very strong rules about not modelling certain things in HOI4.

 

[him_15]

Does Nuke reduce target nation's stability and war support now?

 

[Shaka of Carthage]

If Japan has lost the mainland (korea & china) & some cores (Iwo Jima & other islands) then dropping 2 nukes within a year will make Japan surrender.

Do these conditions apply to other majors? If so, where are they listed.

 

[ambien]

If Japan has lost the mainland (korea & china) & some cores (Iwo Jima & other islands) then dropping 2 nukes within a year will make Japan surrender.

If you drop the nukes whilst they still have 100% of their cores then they wont care and will decide to fight on.


Nukes are very small in the 40's - it was Hydrogen bombs that really boosted the yields from nukes. Nukes will kill military units they are dropped on & do infrastructure damage. I don't think anything in the game kills actual population due to Paradox's very strong rules about not modelling certain things in HOI4.

They weren't that small. I'm sure everyone has seen the horrific photos of the aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

It seems absurd to me that I could drop an infinite number of nukes on Japan, and Japan will keep on fighting as long as they hold onto one core. Historically, Japan controlled all of Korea, most of southeast Asia and significant parts of China as of August 1945.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6a/1945-08-01JapWW2BattlefrontAtlas.jpg

 

[Mister Analyst]

Does Nuke reduce target nation's stability and war support now?

Dropping a nuclear bomb will affect a nation's war support according to the HOI4 wiki nuclear bomb effects:

• units in the province take a random percentage between 10% and 90% of their current strength and organisation as damage
• all province buildings get reduced to 0 HP
• all state buildings are reduced to a random level below their current undamaged level (damaging airports also destroys airplanes located there)
• the controller of the target province loses up to 20% war support. If the largest victory point in the state is smaller than 3 or the undamaged infrastructure is lower than level 10, the effect is proportionately lower respectively.
• The first use, as well as uses on specific (capital) cities, will result in news messages, however those are purely informational
• After the 2nd nuclear bomb has been dropped on a Japanese core state, Japan has a special decision for surrender

 

[justtxyank]

Do these conditions apply to other majors? If so, where are they listed.

No. Japan has a special decision that triggers. If you are at war against Japan and develop nukes you will see it pop up. I believe you have 1 year from the time you develop to:
1) Reduce the Japanese Navy to <40 ships
2) Take Iwo Jima and Okinawa from them
3) Drop two nukes on Japan

#1 and #2 have to be completed before you drop the 2nd nuke or the decision fails and you have to beat them the MacArthur way

 

[ambien]

No. Japan has a special decision that triggers. If you are at war against Japan and develop nukes you will see it pop up. I believe you have 1 year from the time you develop to:
1) Reduce the Japanese Navy to <40 ships
2) Take Iwo Jima and Okinawa from them
3) Drop two nukes on Japan

#1 and #2 have to be completed before you drop the 2nd nuke or the decision fails and you have to beat them the MacArthur way

Seems rather arbitrary. Logically, if you drop (say) 25 nukes on Tokyo, Japan should also surrender.

 

[kettyo]

Seems rather arbitrary. Logically, if you drop (say) 25 nukes on Tokyo, Japan should also surrender.

Why so? It's not so different from firebombing it to utter destruction which really happened and they didn't capitulate and neither so Germany.

The first time usage of nukes ever caused shock indeed which the Emperor used to force a capitulation through but if Japan was in better general position (it was utterly hopeless in reality) they'd got used to it like firebombs, strenghten bomb shelters etc.

 

[kettyo]

Even Japan with the nukes, it's unclear whether they were already prepared to surrender before the nukes and that just got them to the finish line.

They were wishing a conditional surrender long time before the bombings.

Strange thing is that ultimately the Allies forced an unconditional surrender but still fulfilled Japan's conditions eventually on their own.

 

[ambien]

It's not arbitrary, it's a recreation of the historical defeat.

Now I agree, I think nukes should be harder to build and absolutely should force nations to surrender. I don't think it makes sense that anyone would have 20 of them in the 40s though. But if you nuke mainland England 3 times it's silly that they are continuing to fight. We all know France wouldn't have kept fighting if 1 nuke got dropped on Paris, let alone 10 all over the country. It's silly.

Edit: With all that said, this is an interesting debate that deals with the same issues that the famous "The bomber will always get through" concept. Terror bombing has never been proven effective at breaking a country. Even Japan with the nukes, it's unclear whether they were already prepared to surrender before the nukes and that just got them to the finish line.

Would Stalin have surrendered if you nuked the entire Eastern Front? Doubtful.

Not really historical. Japan had way more than 40 ships left by the end of WW2.

Display of Quantitative Data: What was Left of the Japanese Navy, 1945 [Short Post]

JF Ptak Science Books Post 1220 This double-page spread in the Illustrated London News for 28 July 1945 displays what was left of the Japanese Navy. Originally appearing in LIFE magazine a few weeks earlier, the image represents classes of...

longstreet.typepad.com

Even the Soviets probably would have surrendered if Moscow had been nuked 25 times. That was the point of MAD, right? Deterring aggression for fear of nuclear annihilation?

 

[kettyo]

Even the Soviets probably would have surrendered if Moscow had been nuked 25 times

I'm pretty sure they didn't.

They wouldn't have surrendered as long as they can continue the fight.

A lot of major Soviet cities were bombed absolutely to the ground. Made no difference.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

You can also carpet bomb a nation to 0 infra and no functional factories and they won't surrender. That's how the game is, arbitrary exceptions aside.

Nukes do very heavy damage to divisions in the province they strike and badly ruin infrastructure/supply. They can also be used to make air bases/ports worthless until repaired. Think of them as a combination of strategic bombing and CAS, both on steroids.

It's not arbitrary, it's a recreation of the historical defeat.

Which is arbitrary, if you don't mirror the historical conditions closely. Especially because other nations placed in all but identical scenarios (say a UK that has no navy, almost no army, and gets nuked twice) have no such checks. You can dump a bucket of nukes on the Philippines and take half of their territory directly and they won't surrender, but Japan will "because history".

Unless one subscribes to a theory where history did not depend on a chain of causality, that's arbitrary.

 

[ambien]

Why so? It's not so different from firebombing it to utter destruction which really happened and they didn't capitulate and neither so Germany.

The first time usage of nukes ever caused shock indeed which the Emperor used to force a capitulation through but if Japan was in better general position (it was utterly hopeless in reality) they'd got used to it like firebombs, strenghten bomb shelters etc.

Nuclear bombs were magnitudes more destructive than conventional weapons:

"[T]he equivalence argument also misses some important differences in how deadly the atomic bombs were. The firebombing of Tokyo did, indeed, kill the most people of any air raid in history — from 80,000 to over 100,000 dead in a single raid. But the city of Tokyo had some 5 million people living in it. In the areas targeted, there were 1.5 million people living. So that means that it killed no more than 2% of the total population of the city, and no more than 7% of the people who lived in the targeted areas. The bombing of Hiroshima killed between 90,000 and 160,000 people in a city of 345,000 or so. So that is a fatality rate of 26-46%, depending on whose fatality estimates you go with. The bombing of Nagasaki killed between 39,000 to 80,000 people in a city of 260,000 people or so. So that is a fatality rate of 15-30%.

So to put it another way, the Hiroshima bombing was around 5 times more deadly than the Tokyo raid per capita, and the Nagasaki bombing was maybe 4 times more deadly."

Tokyo vs. Hiroshima

How many people would have died if an atomic bomb had been dropped on Tokyo in early 1945, instead of firebombs? And why does it matter?

blog.nuclearsecrecy.com

 

[kettyo]

Which is arbitrary, if you don't mirror the historical conditions closely. Especially because other nations placed in all but identical scenarios (say a UK that has no navy, almost no army, and gets nuked twice) have no such checks. You can dump a bucket of nukes on the Philippines and take half of their territory directly and they won't surrender, but Japan will "because history".

Unless one subscribes to a theory where history did not depend on a chain of causality, that's arbitrary.

You're absolutely right but you might remember how the crowd demanded a Japanese surrender from nukes before it got implemented

Sure a general rule for it would be much more elegant and desirable.

 

[Mister Analyst]

No. Japan has a special decision that triggers. If you are at war against Japan and develop nukes you will see it pop up. I believe you have 1 year from the time you develop to:
1) Reduce the Japanese Navy to <40 ships
2) Take Iwo Jima and Okinawa from them
3) Drop two nukes on Japan

#1 and #2 have to be completed before you drop the 2nd nuke or the decision fails and you have to beat them the MacArthur way

@justtxyank is correct. The code in the game files confirm his assessment.

The HOI4 wiki nuclear bomb effects page has been subsequently amended with an additional note: "prior to dropping the 2nd nuclear bomb, Japan's navy must be reduced to less than 40 ships and Japan must not be the controller of Okinawa or Iwo Jima".

 

[kettyo]

Nuclear bombs were magnitudes more destructive than conventional weapons:

"[T]he equivalence argument also misses some important differences in how deadly the atomic bombs were. The firebombing of Tokyo did, indeed, kill the most people of any air raid in history — from 80,000 to over 100,000 dead in a single raid. But the city of Tokyo had some 5 million people living in it. In the areas targeted, there were 1.5 million people living. So that means that it killed no more than 2% of the total population of the city, and no more than 7% of the people who lived in the targeted areas. The bombing of Hiroshima killed between 90,000 and 160,000 people in a city of 345,000 or so. So that is a fatality rate of 26-46%, depending on whose fatality estimates you go with. The bombing of Nagasaki killed between 39,000 to 80,000 people in a city of 260,000 people or so. So that is a fatality rate of 15-30%.

So to put it another way, the Hiroshima bombing was around 5 times more deadly than the Tokyo raid per capita, and the Nagasaki bombing was maybe 4 times more deadly."

Tokyo vs. Hiroshima

How many people would have died if an atomic bomb had been dropped on Tokyo in early 1945, instead of firebombs? And why does it matter?

blog.nuclearsecrecy.com

I know but as a means of terror bombing (what's proposed in the thread) it isn't much different to an extensive firebombing run considering the end result. It's just faster.

We have no counter-evidences and only can guess but i guess a strong Japan or any other nation for that matter had tried to adapt to the new threat and not surrendered.

We only have this single occurence in history so everything else is rather speculatory.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

You're absolutely right but you might remember how the crowd demanded a Japanese surrender from nukes before it got implemented

Sure a general rule for it would be much more elegant and desirable.

Of course I remember, because I disagreed with said crowd back then too. Similar to my reason for disagreeing with their argumentative stance in general, across all of CK2, EU4, and HOI4. In each case it's arbitrary reasoning that serves to damage the game's internal consistency and historical plausibility, rather than adding to it.

Can't break causality/have historical outcomes w/o historical inputs and claim one's argument comes from a preference for "historical accuracy". At least such a claim can't be coherent.

 

[kettyo]

Can't break causality/have historical outcomes w/o historical inputs and claim one's argument comes from a preference for "historical accuracy". At least such a claim can't be coherent.

Actually i think it's perfectly possible to design a good general condition for surrendering from nuclear bombing which would also include the historical situation.

It would be more incidental than strategic effect just like in reality.

Should happen if the capitulating side has already lost the war by every practical means.